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May 4, 2014

Since its launch in 2009, Gil Shaham’s exploration of ‘Violin Concertos of the 1930s’ has fostered a wealth of collaborations between the Avery Fisher Prize-winner and the foremost orchestras and conductors of three continents. Now the first installment of this monumental journey has finally been captured on disc. The double album presents Shaham in live accounts of five of the decade’s most compelling concertos, with works by Barber, Berg, Stravinsky, Britten and Hartmann.

Thanks for playing a work by this composer, Hartmann, who I was previously unaware of. I am going to want to listen to more of his work. It is unfortunate that in the swings of musical dogmas, from super-formalistic excesses of the 1950-70’s period to the super-accessibility of the least of today’s “minimalist” composers that music like this has been the casualty.

The worst aspect of “serious” music has been the ranking of compositions by adherence to the current reigning dogma. Fortunately this does not happen in jazz and popular music.